The ‘bought out’ as a fictional story: how the music trade discovered to promote success even when there was none | Culture | EUROtoday

Most of the “sold out” indicators (bought outs, in its English time period) which might be posted in Spain are debatable. A notion that can’t be understood with out observing how the dwell trade works at present: the bought out It is an inner promoting software throughout the music trade. In Madrid, probably the most paradigmatic case is the Movistar Arena (former WiZink Center), which has operated as a modular area for years. Although its most capability is round 17,000 folks, it permits configurations ranging from simply over 3,500 spectators and different intermediate ones of between 5,000 and 10,000. In these, the capability provided on the market is exhausted, however the constructing, in bodily phrases, is way from full. The promoter and programmer Javier Domínguez (Madrid, 43 years outdated), higher referred to as Ferrara, sums it up like this: “They try to sell an image of constant growth to justify numbers that often do not correspond to the reality of the artist.”

In this context, saying a sold-out live performance at a reference venue works as a legitimizing argument for festivals, public programmers or native promoters, even when the financial stability of the occasion has been fragile or instantly unfavourable. Ferrara, programmer of cycles comparable to Mazo Madrid or Sound Isidro, remembers an instance that illustrates the extent to which this logic has turn into normalized: “On one occasion at Joy Eslava, with a capacity for 900, they had sold about 270 tickets, they had a list of 600 guests and they sang sold out”. This shouldn’t be an remoted anecdote, however quite a recurring apply in markets the place the story of development carries as a lot weight as actual attendance.

None of this may be defined with out taking into consideration how the music trade has modified because the early years of the twenty first century. The enlargement of the competition mannequin (in 2025, between 900 and 1,000 festivals had been held in Spain) has modified the way in which by which artists are remunerated. Unlike live shows in halls, the place earnings relies upon largely on ticket gross sales, at festivals musicians cost a hard and fast quantity agreed prematurely. In this situation, hanging a “sold out” signal, whether or not true or not, turns into a negotiable asset: it doesn’t serve a lot to make that particular live performance worthwhile as to lift the worth of your presence on the competition.

For Juan Santaner (Mallorca, 59 years outdated), who at the moment runs Industrias Bala and has labored for many years in promoters, businesses and labels, this inflation has clear limits: “I understand that a group that performs in a venue charges 3,000 euros and in a festival 6,000. Because the festival has bars, sponsors, public aid… What you cannot do is charge 3,000 in the venue and 30,000 in the festival.” Santaner warns towards synthetic inflation: “I once left a company and everyone started calling me because my successor had tripled the caches. What I offered for 4,000 euros, he was offering for 15,000 and, of course, no group had experienced corresponding growth.”

Added to this logic is a cloth subject that’s not very seen: the true prices of the dwell present. Not all “sold out” live shows are essentially worthwhile, and the deficit is assumed as an funding in positioning. “Selling a successful screening is not free,” insists Ferrara. However, not all constructions can afford to take that danger. There is the case of The Music Republic, a community that mixes a illustration company with the possession of festivals comparable to FIB, Festival de Les Arts or Viña Rock. In 2024, the American fund KKR acquired Superstruct Entertainment (proprietor of The Music Republic) for round 1.3 billion euros. In this ecosystem, a wheel is generated that’s tough to interrupt: the identical actors who inflate the caches of their artists are, on the similar time, the one ones who can afford to pay them.

The penalties are felt particularly strongly at small and medium-sized festivals. David Cuerdo (Oviedo, 45 years outdated) is without doubt one of the administrators of Prestoso, a competition of 1,500 folks in Cangas del Narcea: “Prestoso would be, at most, the smallest corner within a macro-festival. At festivals like ours, this practice affects us.” Cuerdo additionally factors out the centralism of the sector. Before Prestoso, he was a programmer on the La Salvaje venue in Oviedo: “Once a band came that had filled La Riviera and had 17 people here. I have also had the case of a band that had 60 people at a free concert in Oviedo, and what they asked Prestoso for was 10,000 euros. For me that is lapidary: it does no good even to the person who earns those 10,000.” Ferrara, along with centralism, provides one other distortion to calculate the worth: “Monthly listeners do not go hand in hand with ticket sales. For me, for example, an urban artist with 200,000 or 300,000 listeners is equivalent to the ticket sales of a rock band with 30,000 or 40,000.”

A logic much like Prestoso is noticed in Festival Observatorio, which has been held for eight editions in Balboa (León) and intentionally maintains a decreased capability. “We have been maintaining practically the same capacity for several years,” clarify Hannah Olmedilla (Madrid, 28 years outdated), Jaime Torrego (Madrid, 29) and Iván Dueñas (Madrid, 34), organizers of the competition. However, Observatorio and Prestoso admit that, in sure circumstances, the bands are prepared to decrease their cache in change for different advantages. “There are artists who know that the cache that is requested at first does not make sense for a festival like ours, but they still want to come because it compensates for other reasons,” they level out from Observatorio. “Being on our lineup puts you in a showcase that is not proportional to the actual size of the festival, but to its potential within a certain niche.” From Prestoso they agree: “A group that in a macro festival would be in the third or fourth line, at most, here is the headliner. Furthermore, there are no overlaps: everyone goes to see you, and people come to listen to real music.”

Even so, the capitalist logic of the market is felt. From Observatorio they do not forget that in 2022 they had been on the verge of canceling the version: “We were in very bad sales and we had to launch a statement: if we did not sell X more tickets, the festival would not go ahead and the losses would come directly out of our pocket. The festival is always celebrated sold out, Although many times it is a lie, but the opposite is almost never said,” they level out. “And that is also part of the reality of the live show.”

Pressure to succeed

All these interviewed agree that the inflation of caches is accompanied by a rising stress to look profitable: “We live in a sales culture of constant success,” explains Ferrara. “That puts pressure on artists to always try to go to larger capacities.” Santaner sums it up from expertise: “I have worked with many artists who have been there for 20 years and are always in the same place. They have their audience and that is going to be them. And nothing happens. But for emerging artists it is another story.” That stress is what generally kills rising musical tasks. Bego (Toledo, 37 years outdated), vocalist and chief of Monteperdido (band signed to Sonido Muchacho and dissolved in 2023) describes it like this: “Before Monteperdido I was not a person obsessed with numbers. I had the childish idea of ​​wanting me to do well. That started when I entered that environment. The experience with the industry damaged me a lot psychologically.” After taking part in a number of instances on the Sala El Sol, their subsequent live performance was deliberate in a bigger room. Shortly after, he determined to stroll away from the trade: “It broke my social fabric, my creativity, everything.” Even so, they averted speaking the top as farewell: “The Copérnico concert was the last in Madrid, but we were forced to camouflage it for fear that the Sonorama and the Canela Party, where we were going to play that summer, would fall. That destroyed me, because the economic benefit of the industry was taken into account more than the well-being of the band itself.”

The use of bought out Fiction as a legitimization software has ended up altering the stability of dwell streaming: it distorts the notion of success, stresses the institution of caches and shifts danger in the direction of probably the most fragile margins of the sector. The distance between narrative and actuality not solely impacts the financial system of venues and festivals, but additionally the sustainability of inventive tasks themselves.